Japanese Folklore Quotes

I don’t have yellow fever. I’m not one of those creepy dudes who write exclusively about Japanese folklore and wear kimonos and pronounce every loan word from Asian languages with a deliberate, constructed accent. Matcha. Otaku. I’m not obsessed with stealing Asian culture—I mean, before The Last Front, I had no interest in modern Chinese history whatsoever.

Alice recalled one of the books Dylan had read to her, a collection of Japanese fairytales. In one, a woman artist practiced kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. There'd been an illustration of a woman bent over a pile of broken pottery pieces, laid out to fit together, with a fine paintbrush in her hand, its bristles dipped in gold. It had enchanted Alice, the idea that breakage and repair were part of the story, not something to be disdained or disguised.

There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano);  Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody.  You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.  For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers.

He did not care about titles and was proud to be a farmer beyond all else.

Can we ever hope for a Natural History with colored plates that will show us how the world appears to the faceted eyes of a dragon-fly?

..and Umétsu remembered that goblins were wont to assume feminine shapes after dark, in order to deceive and destroy men.

Hm? These cherry tomatoes... they've been dried. Right, Tadokoro?" "Y-yes, sir! Back home, winter can be really long. In the summer we harvest a lot of vegetables and preserve them so we can have them in winter too. Mostly by sun drying them. When I was little, I'd help with that part. That's when my Ma -um, I mean, my mother- taught me how to dry them in the oven. You cut the cherry tomatoes in half, sprinkle them with rock salt and then slowly dry them at a low temperature, around 245* F. I, um... thought they'd make a nice accent for the terrine..." "Right. Tomatoes are rich in the amino acid glutamate essential in umami. Drying them concentrates the glutamate, greatly increasing the amount of sweetness the tongue senses. In Shinomiya's case... ... his nine-vegetable terrine focused on fresh vegetables, with their bright and lively flavors. But this recette accentuates the savory deliciousness of vegetables preserved over time. Both dishes are vegetable terrines... ... but one centers on the delicacy of the fresh... ... while the other on the savory goodness of the ripe and aged. They are two completely different approaches to the same ingredient- vegetables!" "Mmm! This is the flavor that warms the soul. You can feel my darling Megumi's kindness in every bite." "For certain. If Shinomiya is the "Vegetable Magician"... ... I would say Megumi is... a modest spirit who gifts you with the bounty of nature. a Vegetable Colobuckle!" *A tiny spirit from Ainu folklore said to live under butterbur leaves* "No, that's not what she is! Megumi is a spirit who brings happiness and tastiness... a Vegetable Warashi!" *Childlike spirits from Japanese folklore said to bring good fortune* "Or perhaps she is that spirit which delivers the bounty of vegetables from the snowy north... a Vegetable Yukinoko!" *Small snow sprites* "It's not winter, so you can't call her a snow sprite!" "How come all of you are picking spirits from Japanese folklore anyway?

As Japan recovered from the post-war depression, okonomiyaki became the cornerstone of Hiroshima's nascent restaurant culture. And with new variables- noodles, protein, fishy powders- added to the equation, it became an increasingly fungible concept. Half a century later it still defies easy description. Okonomi means "whatever you like," yaki means "grill," but smashed together they do little to paint a clear picture. Invariably, writers, cooks, and oko officials revert to analogies: some call it a cabbage crepe; others a savory pancake or an omelet. Guidebooks, unhelpfully, refer to it as Japanese pizza, though okonomiyaki looks and tastes nothing like pizza. Otafuku, for its part, does little to clarify the situation, comparing okonomiyaki in turn to Turkish pide, Indian chapati, and Mexican tacos. There are two overarching categories of okonomiyaki Hiroshima style, with a layer of noodles and a heavy cabbage presence, and Osaka or Kansai style, made with a base of eggs, flour, dashi, and grated nagaimo, sticky mountain yam. More than the ingredients themselves, the difference lies in the structure: whereas okonomiyaki in Hiroshima is carefully layered, a savory circle with five or six distinct layers, the ingredients in Osaka-style okonomiyaki are mixed together before cooking. The latter is so simple to cook that many restaurants let you do it yourself on table side teppans. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, on the other hand, is complicated enough that even the cooks who dedicate their lives to its construction still don't get it right most of the time. (Some people consider monjayaki, a runny mass of meat and vegetables popularized in Tokyo's Tsukishima district, to be part of the okonomiyaki family, but if so, it's no more than a distant cousin.) Otafuku entered the picture in 1938 as a rice vinegar manufacturer. Their original factory near Yokogawa Station burned down in the nuclear attack, but in 1946 they started making vinegar again. In 1950 Otafuku began production of Worcestershire sauce, but local cooks complained that it was too spicy and too thin, that it didn't cling to okonomiyaki, which was becoming the nutritional staple of Hiroshima life. So Otafuku used fruit- originally orange and peach, later Middle Eastern dates- to thicken and sweeten the sauce, and added the now-iconic Otafuku label with the six virtues that the chubby-cheeked lady of Otafuku, a traditional character from Japanese folklore, is supposed to represent, including a little nose for modesty, big ears for good listening, and a large forehead for wisdom.

Symptoms of kitsune-tsuki varied. There are descriptions of “afflicted persons who ate gravel, ashes, hair, or combs, wandered the mountains and fields making piles of stones, jumped into rivers or ran into the mountains, etc.”29 In 1894, Lafcadio Hearn wrote, “Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps.”30 Kitsune-tsuki (and other forms of possession) persisted throughout Hearn’s time, and similar phenomena are still occasionally identified today. But during the Meiji period, modern Western medicine was called on to redefine fox possession as a form of mental illness treatable by psychiatrists.

It's for the people I've lost in my life. In Japanese folklore, a crane is the carrier of souls to the afterlife.

This collection of Japanese fairy tales is the outcome of a suggestion made to me indirectly through a friend by Mr. Andrew Lang. They have been translated from the modern version written by Sadanami Sanjin. These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.

A most extraordinary device for catching dragon-flies is used by the children of the province of Kii. They get a long hair, - a woman's hair, - and attach a very small pebble to each end of it, so as to form a miniature "bolas"; and this they sling high into the air. A dragon-fly pounces upon the passing object; but the moment that he seizes it, the hair twists round his body, and the weight of the pebbles brings him to the ground.

Master sailor Tokuzō has set sail on New Year's Eve even though it is forbidden to do so, whereupon a violent storm breaks out, and the close-cropped head of a massive monster rises out of the waves like a mountain. Unafraid, Tokuzō calls out "Nothing is as scary as making one's living!" and the monster vanishes away.

by until that moment and, by extension, her identity and the roots connecting her to her parents. Chihiro literally becomes “thousand,” a simple number among the innumerable employees at the bathhouse. Yet, in the world of Aburaya, a person cannot return home if they have forgotten their original name. Through the contraction of a name, Yubaba obtains immense control over her employees. The most striking example comes from Haku: he is the spirit of a river drained for urbanization, thus a damned soul, his original name forgotten, his identity obliterated. The Japanese title of the film, 千と千尋の神隠し Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, easily expresses this difference of personality. “Kamikakushi” is a word used in Japan to speak of disappearances, with the implication that the missing person, especially a child, has been taken away by a god or spirit (as done by the Tengu when they began appearing in Japanese folklore). The original title takes on a very interesting meaning, since it also allows for a double meaning; the translation can be “The Disappearance of Sen and Chihiro” or “Sen and the Disappearance of Chihiro.” This second possibility illustrates further what is depicted on the screen. While passing through the bathhouse world, Chihiro is put to one side and the Sen part of her personality develops,

Unlike the Japanese tattoo, which flows over the contours of the body like a river over stones, the Americans cover their arms with a hodgepodge of unsightly, obvious designs—hearts, anchors, flags, and the like. I suppose an upstart country like the United States doesn’t have any folklore or tradition to draw upon, but still, there’s no excuse for the total lack of artistry. No imagination. And the shading techniques are appallingly primitive, like something from the Stone Age! The subtle shadowing that sets the Japanese tattoo apart is achieved by the use of natural pigments which are applied with immeasurable skill by a true artist manipulating a variety of needles, with each bundle of needles encased in a wooden handle. But the Americans! They use a single needle, which is why their designs are as thin as a bowl of milk that’s been left out in the rain.

A very successful method of dragon-fly-catching..is to use a captured female dragon-fly as a decoy. One end of a long thread is fastened to the insect's tail, and the other end of the thread to a flexible rod. By moving the rod in a particular way the female can be kept circling on her wings at the full length of the thread; and a male is soon attracted. As soon as he clings to the female, a slight jerk of the rod will bring both insects into the angler's hand. With a single female for lure, it is easy to capture eight or ten males in succession

It’s just that I want her to open up to my version of fairy tales, my melancholy stories from Japanese folklore. Where the endings are often bittersweet—emphasis on the “bitter.” Where it’s possible for, say, a girl with a dead mom and a deadbeat dad to triumph somehow, even if it means casting aside idealized notions of love and turning into a monster.

inspired by a mythical creature from Japanese folklore. According to legend, certain Japanese red foxes, or kitsune, magically grow an additional tail for every thousand years they have lived.

An example of a particularly well-known yōkai is the Tanuki, depicted as a partially anthropomorphic raccoon dog, which is also called tanuki; the term bake-danuki is thus used to refer specifically to the supernatural being. Statues of Tanuki are popular adornments for homes, shops and taverns. The earliest reference to the supernatural tanuki, or a similar being, under the essentially interchangeable term mujina, which strictly refers to the Japanese badger, is in the Nihongi, which in the annals for the year 627 CE speaks of the appearance of a mujina who transformed into a man and sang, demonstrating the antiquity of Atsutane’s category of transmuted animal tengu. The bake-danuki subsequently has a long history in folklore, often as a shapeshifting trickster, occasionally malevolent, but most often as an object of humor. At the same time, bake-danuki continue to be experienced into contemporary times as the source of what in the West are termed ‘paranormal’ events, as in a story Foster recounts (190f) from the 1930s, in which no visible bake-danuki appeared, but a man’s uncanny experience of being transported far from his home in a single night on a nonexistent locomotive is attributed locally to the actions of a tanuki. In such fashion, although yōkai are regarded as occurring near the bottom of the hierarchy stretching from the kami to ordinary humans, Their ability to continually interject Themselves into mundane existence in surreal fashion appears greater, one of the paradoxes, perhaps, of the status of ‘unworshiped’ kami, if indeed that is what They are.